


Then I'll Wave and Say Goodbye

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-27
Updated: 2008-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-29 13:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was better when she didn't know their names. (Coda for 4x02)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Then I'll Wave and Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Title from Gracie Allen. Thank you to [](http://innie-darling.livejournal.com/profile)[**innie_darling**](http://innie-darling.livejournal.com/) for the wonderfully helpful and speedy beta. Written for [](http://spn-xx.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_xx**](http://spn-xx.livejournal.com/) gen flashfic [challenge #27.](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_xx/31027.html?mode=reply)

TEN YEARS AGO

It was better when she didn't know their names.

The place where she'd buried the bodies was a few hundred miles behind her in the rear-view mirror. Olivia glanced down at the map, open on the empty passenger seat beside her, then flicked her gaze back onto the road. That was one useful thing Daddy had taught her before he'd left, to keep your eye on the road, keep your eye on whatever task you had at hand. Funny that he was so good at focusing, but couldn't stay in one place. Funnier how she was just like him.

She rolled her window down, and the wind that whipped into her beat-up Honda felt alive, smelled of muddy river bottoms mixed with fresh-cut grass and a hint of skunk.

Zachary and Jenna.

She squinted through the windshield, flipped down the visor against the blazing afternoon sunlight. There was an eighteen-wheeler ahead of her, traffic pretty light. She'd make good time to Decatur.

Leaning down, she rummaged in the shoe box near her foot, grabbed a cassette with her own handwriting scrawled on the label and shoved it into the deck.

Zachary and Jenna Taylor.

Music blared out of the speakers, voices roughened a little by static, delivering an ad for Maxwell House coffee, and then Gracie and George started to do their thing. She propped her elbow on the edge of the rolled-down window, curled her fingers against her mouth, and smiled. _Any man who'd make an innocent butler sit on a hotplate…_

A larger car breezed past her little clunker, parents in the front, two kids in the back arguing so loudly she could hear them even over Burns and Allen. The little girl caught Olivia's eye as they went by, stuck her tongue out and Olivia stuck her tongue out right back.

The hunt in Decatur was a haunting, on paper sounding easy enough to handle on her own, never mind Bobby's muttering about how _you got more sense than that, don't you? If you're not sure, bring a partner._ She was twenty-five, for god's sake, too old to be bossed. Although Bobby would be calling Harvelle's, and the next time Olivia swung by the Roadhouse, she'd probably get an earful from Ellen.

Zachary and Jenna Taylor, early twenties.

Scarred and weathered hunters had always told her, it really didn't do to think about them. You saved the ones you could and the ones you couldn't were casualties in a long, slow burn of a war. It had its parleys and its lulls, but no treaties and no end.

Olivia never wanted to be a soldier. She was finishing up her final film and media project the night she got the call about Daddy's older brother, him and his wife, found mangled in their home, blood spattered on the kitchen floor. Dad never even showed up for the funeral, the bastard. They hadn't heard from him going on fifteen years now; Olivia learned to do without. Growing up, she'd had her mom and Uncle Ted and Aunt Marie, and they were plenty.

Now she called Mom whenever she could, Mom who thought she'd gone mad, but Olivia had noticed the strange marks on the windowsill, things the police couldn't make sense of, and she was frighteningly sane, thank you very much. She'd done some research and wound up opening a door she wished had stayed closed.

She had Ellen and Bobby, and Jo who cornered Olivia with questions whenever she swung by Harvelle's, until Ellen snapped at her and Jo's jaw jutted out as she stomped away to see to the dishes.

Zachary and Jenna Taylor, wearing matched rings, looked like newlyweds. On a weekend trip when their car broke down on a remote stretch of road near where Olivia was tracking a Gulon in the woods.

She hit eject on the tape deck, flipped the tape over. More Burns and Allen on the other side. There was an Abbot and Costello marathon starting on a local station in Decatur at midnight; if the work went smoothly, she'd have time to watch it at her motel, whatever flea trap she picked to lay her head down.

Olivia pulled into the right lane. Plenty of time to stop for lunch at least, be in Decatur by sundown to face the ghosts. A place near Olney had the best damn French fries in three states, crispy and hand-cut with the skin still on them. Her mouth watered. After the food, there was work.

After the ghosts, there was laughter.

Zachary and Jenna Taylor, he was wiry and moved quick, she was calm and pretty. Their rings glinted, his hand gripped tight around hers.

She'd heard the Taylors, had run through the woods, ignoring the branches that scraped her arms. Gotten between them and the monster, had sent the Taylors running while she'd fended it off, he'd gasped out their names, and thanks. She hadn't seen the second Gulon until it'd sprung at Zachary.

That was just how it went sometimes, though. You saved the ones you could. There was nothing more she could have done. Move on to the next hunt, because there was always another job out there.

Olivia turned up the volume, the laugh track like water over stones, let the exit for Olney slide past her, and kept on driving.


End file.
